Small Town, Big Problem

BRAD CLIFT

JESSICA CANWELL, right, watches for police officers as she shoots up with her sister, Amy-Lee Canwell, left, and Michelle Missino in the gazebo on Main Street, Willimantic, in late summer. As the women injected themselves with the heroin they had bought a few blocks away, teenagers played soccer on a field next the gazebo.

IN THE BATHROOM WINDOW of her room at the Hotel Hooker, Jessica Canwell shoots heroin into a vein. She had just returned from a memorial service for John Davis, her boyfriend of six years. Afflicted with AIDS, Davis died of a staph infection on July 15. He was 44.